We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.
When you see the rise of support among young people, for socialism. Which is a philosophy that has robbed the liberties of generations and impoverished nations over the last century... I think it is incumbent on us, to go out and tell freedom's story. To make sure that the rising generation of Americans know that the idea of socialism, whatever guise it comes under, whether we call it medicare for all, or the green new deal, the truth is that socialism is antithetical to freedom.
I have talked face to face with the godless communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Khrushchev for a half day when he visited the United States, not that I’m proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor. But, according to President Eisenhower, Khrushchev had expressed a desire to learn something of American Agriculture — and after seeing Russian agriculture I can understand why. As we talked face to face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom, he arrogantly declaired in substance: "You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you’ll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands." And they’re ahead of schedule in their devilish scheme.
To be ethical, if you're a billionaire today, the thing that you need to do is give up control, and power. So, I don't want your money as much as we want your power. The people, not me. (That's gonna get cut and clipped.)
Erin Burnett: When you introduced your wealth tax, which would tax the assets of the wealthiest Americans, you said, quoting you senator, "billionaires should not exist." Is the goal of your plan to tax billionaires out of existence? Bernie Sanders: When you have a half-million Americans sleeping out on the street today. When you have 87 million people uninsured or under-insured. When you have hundreds of thousands of kids who cannot afford to go to college. And millions, struggling with the oppressive burden of student debt. And then you also have three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society. That is a moral and economic outrage. And the truth is, we cannot afford to continue this level of income and wealth inequality. And we cannot afford a billionaire class who's greed and corruption has been at war with the working families of this country for 45 years. So if you are asking me, do I think we should demand the wealthy start paying ... the wealthiest top 1/10th of 1 percent, start paying their fair share of taxes, so we can create a nation and government that works for all of us? Yes, that's exactly what I believe.
We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence.
We have lost our strength, our pride, our passion. We do not even fear a common nuclear death, do not fear a third world war (perhaps we’ll hide away in some crevice), but fear only to take a civic stance!
We hope only not to stray from the herd, not to set out on our own, and risk suddenly having to make do without the white bread, the hot water heater, a Moscow residency permit.
The natural thing would be simply not to reelect them, but there are no re-elections in our country.
All the other fateful means resorted to over the last century of Russia’s bitter history are even less fitting for us today—true, let’s not fall back on them! Today, when all the axes have hewn what they hacked, when all that was sown has borne fruit, we can see how lost, how drugged were those conceited youths who sought, through terror, bloody uprising, and civil war, to make the country just and content. No thank you, fathers of enlightenment! We now know that the vileness of the means begets the vileness of the result. Let our hands be clean!
But it will never come unstuck by itself, if we all, every day, continue to acknowledge, glorify, and strengthen it, if we do not, at the least, recoil from its most vulnerable point. From lies.
When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance, it displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly, a few years pass—and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.
And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!
For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.
We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!
Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies!
Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world.
And thus, overcoming our timidity, let each man choose: Will he remain a witting servant of the lies (needless to say, not due to natural predisposition, but in order to provide a living for the family, to rear the children in the spirit of lies!), or has the time come for him to stand straight as an honest man, worthy of the respect of his children and contemporaries? And from that day onward he: * Will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth; * Will not utter such a line in private or in public conversation, nor read it from a crib sheet, nor speak it in the role of educator, canvasser, teacher, actor; * Will not in painting, sculpture, photograph, technology, or music depict, support, or broadcast a single false thought, a single distortion of the truth as he discerns it; * Will not cite in writing or in speech a single “guiding” quote for gratification, insurance, for his success at work, unless he fully shares the cited thought and believes that it fits the context precisely; * Will not be forced to a demonstration or a rally if it runs counter to his desire and his will; will not take up and raise a banner or slogan in which he does not fully believe; * Will not raise a hand in vote for a proposal which he does not sincerely support; will not vote openly or in secret ballot for a candidate whom he deems dubious or unworthy; * Will not be impelled to a meeting where a forced and distorted discussion is expected to take place; * Will at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play, or film as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda; * Will not subscribe to, nor buy in retail, a newspaper or journal that distorts or hides the underlying facts. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the possible and necessary ways of evading lies. But he who begins to cleanse himself will, with a cleansed eye, easily discern yet other opportunities.
And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.
Betrayed and deceived by us, did not a great European people—the Czechoslovaks—show us how one can stand down the tanks with bared chest alone, as long as inside it beats a worthy heart?
We need not be the first to set out on this path, Ours is but to join! The more of us set out together, the thicker our ranks, the easier and shorter will this path be for us all! If we become thousands—they will not cope, they will be unable to touch us. If we will grow to tens of thousands—we will not recognize our country! But if we shrink away, then let us cease complaining that someone does not let us draw breath—we do it to ourselves!
Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-communism." It's a very stupid word, badly put together. It makes it appear as though communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-communism is defined in relation to communism. Here is why I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology: the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. And communism is anti-humanity.
For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.
Human nature is full of riddles, and one of these riddles is this: How is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit then in body, while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and hopelessly confused and lost almost begin to crave slavery?
Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.
But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion.
Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion.
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.
I regard the socialistic movement as not merely a danger, but by far the greatest present danger to human well-being. Although there is now a broader and firmer foundation for socialistic schemes than existed earlier, no socialistic scheme yet advanced seems to make adequate provision for the maintenance of high enterprise and individual strength of character. socialism
Indeed, many have observed that socialism’s focus on who gets what is every bit as materialistic as a market-based society.
Scientific socialism—or at least, scientific public administration—reduces citizenship to a series of cold transactions with the government.
Empty consumerism and soulless government are the traditional two explanations for our modern alienation. These days, there is a brand-new one: tech. The tech revolution promised us our heart’s desires: everything you want to know at the click of a mouse; the ability to become famous to strangers; anything you want to buy, delivered to your door in days without you having to leave home. But our happiness has not increased as a result — on the contrary. Mounting evidence shows that media and technology use predict deleterious psychological and physiological outcomes, especially among young people.
America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
"If all that putting the pencil together requires is basic use of your prefrontal cortex," Shapiro interjects, "then, yes, your labor is alienable at lower rates than if you were a doctor. That's not the fault of the person who owns the machinery."
"No, those are people who are investing the risk," he says of shareholders. "So if they carry the risk, then they get the benefit. The owner of the factory carries the risk; therefore, he gets the benefit."
"Who do you think put more in?" Shapiro asks. "The guy who spent millions of dollars buying all the machinery, leasing the place, making sure there was a management structure, doing the LLC formation, making sure all the tax code was in compliance — or you because you can stick a piece of graphite into a piece of wood?"
Classic Socialism: Once I blow through my money, I’ll take yours.
I watched what was once one of the richest countries in Latin America gradually fall apart under the weight of big government.
In practice, socialism didn’t work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy. In the vast library of socialist theory (and in all of Marx’s compendious works), there is hardly a chapter devoted to the creation of wealth to what will cause human beings to work and to innovate, or to what will make their efforts efficient. Socialism is a plan of morally sanctioned theft. It is about dividing up what others have created. Consequently, socialist economies don’t work; they create poverty instead of wealth. This is unarguable historical fact now, but that has not prompted the left to have second thoughts.
It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.
Bernie is a taker, not a maker
If we accept private inheritance, we should accept social inheritance, regarding a basic income as a “social dividend” on our collective wealth. In an era of rentier capitalism, in which more and more income is being channelled to the owners of assets—physical, financial and intellectual—and in which wages will continue to stagnate, a basic income would provide an anchor for a fairer income-distribution system.
A Ponzi scheme operates by taking money from new investors to pay current investors. That's the definition given by the SEC, and contrary to popular belief, that's exactly how Social Security operates.
Our embrace of either crony capitalism or welfare statism is going to end very badly. Ideological positions have hardened to the point that compromise seems impossible.
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
Talk to anyone who has lived under communism (NOT studied it or listened to a collectivist professor) and we can tell you that collectivism doesn't work. I know this young American millennial generation believes "this time they'll get collectivism right" but they won't. Instead, they will receive the predictable outcome of so many other countries before them. Capitalism while not perfect, has PROVEN itself to provide the best outcomes for the "common person" in all of human history. Collectivism has PROVEN the opposite. It is THE reason why for 200 years people have fled TO America, not FROM America.
In the Netherlands, I’d learned that a society could prioritize collective well-being over individual achievement. That “enough” could be a destination, not just a pit stop on the way to “more.”
The Dutch principle of “niksen” ― the art of doing nothing ― replaced our American addiction to busyness. The biggest adjustment wasn’t learning to live with less ― it was realizing how much more we gained: time, connection, and a sense of safety I didn’t even know we were missing.
They’ve done everything right — the schools, the hours, the hustle — and yet they still feel stuck. Rents climb faster than salaries. Taxes eat away their paychecks. Buying a home feels impossible. They’re not broke. They’re just burned out. They’ve stopped believing that hard work automatically leads to stability, let alone success.
The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!
If Ocasio-Cortez has her way, Democrats are going to do to the rest of America what they just did to New York.
For me, it was so simple. The state ought not to tell people what to do. My experience reinforced my beliefs. It was becoming obvious to people that the socialist way meant accepting decline. Can you imagine — people accepting decline.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
As we’ve learned from countless examples throughout history, including now Venezuela, the main difference between capitalism and socialism is this: capitalism works.
Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't nanny tell you what to do?
Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.
An effect - which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual...is that while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self support.
Uncle Sam's gold - meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman - has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes;
When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Business (big and small) used to be a core principle of being an American. Now it's becoming what can the government tax from others to provide for me?
Good point. Capitalism divvied up among many people is still capitalism. In fact, worker-owned companies might even be MORE capitalistic cause, as you noted, everyone incurs risk in that scenario. These folks don't know it, but they aren't against capitalism or for socialism, they are against somebody else having more than them. I think that's called envy.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.
Missing Reference